Binge Factor Media

In the podcasting industry, only less than 1% drive income. Not everyone can be the next Joe Rogan. But while creating content that will last may seem a difficult feat doesn’t mean that it is impossible. Listen in to today’s episode as Alex Terranova of the DreamMason Podcast gives you some advice on how to strengthen your content. Are you repurposing your content to your other platforms? Are you connecting with your guests in the present? Or are you not having fun, and this all seems like a job for you? Join your host Tracy Hazzard as she talks to Alex on what makes good podcast content. There are a lot of factors that differentiate good content from bad content. Learn all the good ones today.

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Master Of Change: Advice For Strengthening Your Podcast Show Content Over Time From Alex Terranova Of The DreamMason Podcast

I am excited to talk to a podcaster who has been doing this a while and has made a lot of shifts in a show. We’re going to talk a lot about that because it’s interesting to see someone who’s finding things working and then shifting overtime to get it working. I’ve got Alex Terranova on. He is the host of The DreamMason Podcast. Alex is a Performance Alchemist who was dubbed The Anti-Excuses Coach by Yahoo Finance. He’s a Breaker of Limiting Mental Beliefs, a sometimes model, a want to be Yogi Guru and Poet.

Legend has that he’s fortified with strength from a plant-based diet and was once a reality show villain. Sometimes called the DreamMason, he also authored Fictional Authenticity, co-author of the bestselling book Redefining Masculinity, hosts The DreamMason Podcast, The Frequency Shifters Show and co-hosts The Coaching Show.

Whether it’s time to get a reality check, evolve from your financially privileged adolescence or emerge as a leader, he will get you grounded, present your impact and connect to what deeply matters to you. Let’s talk about The DreamMason Podcast and look at all the different ways you might be able to adjust and shift your show to fit your growing authority, your growing business, just like Alex Terranova.

Alex, thanks for joining me. We’re going to talk about The DreamMason Podcast. Why did you start The DreamMason Podcast?

I used to listen. I lived in New York City and I was on subways all the time. You can download podcasts. You can’t download the radio. I’d come from LA, where I would listen to CDs or things at that time in my life, then we would start connecting our phones. Growing up in LA, you also would listen to the radio at times. You listened to the different radio stations. I went to New York and you couldn’t do that. It was only what you had on your phone.

I would go in the subway and I would read. I had a subway book that I would only read on the subway, but subways can be pretty crazy with noise and I needed some other factor to control the noise. I started listening to podcasts, which I could do while I was reading. The subtle distraction worked well for my brain. I fell in love with them that way. Eventually, I found myself I’d be in the kitchen, cooking dinner, listening to podcasts. I was sharing podcasts with people. This all happened at a point in my life where I was trying to improve my life and make myself better. I noticed that a lot of these people were helping me do that.

A lot of these podcasts were giving me ideas, books to read, meditations to find and all these things. When I was building my business, I felt like I could not only do it, but if I’m enjoying it so much, wouldn’t I like to contribute? I started it for myself. I didn’t know if anybody was going to listen. It was like, “Let’s have fun. If I get to interview some pretty impressive people, I’m going to get to learn from them, which will be pretty cool.” That and the fact that you get to interview somebody that you may have never met. That was the beginning of it. The next thing I knew, I fell in love. I would wake up excited to podcast. To me, follow your feelings, especially when they’re happy, joy, inspiration, chase that.

It shows in the show because you have a fun time with your guests. You’re learning something from them. You’re intrigued. You are an active listener. That’s obviously the way that it shows. You’ve done over 200 episodes. If it wasn’t fun, you wouldn’t keep doing it.

I’ve done multiple shows. The DreamMason Podcast is one. I’ve done probably 3 or 4 shows of my own or with other people. I’ve experimented with other ideas too. One of the things I noticed, if it’s not fun, either I got to make it fun or it’s not the right fit. It’s time to work on something else.

Now that you’ve got your business more developed, does it have an integral place in the marketing of the business or of the way you run your business?

I wish I could say it did more in the sense of I put so much passion and love into the podcast. I wish it did translate more like more podcasting, more business. It’s also great that I know that it doesn’t because I don’t have to think of it like that. What I noticed it does, along with writing a book, I tell people too often the one asked me about the books I’ve written or my podcasts, “Do not write a book or start a podcast because you think it’s going to make you money.” Unless you are writing a Harry Potter or you think you’re John Grisham, it’s probably not going to happen like that.

If you like writing, podcasting, learning about things, researching things or being creative, by all means. What I found is the love of it shows up with people that are on the fence about hiring me, or they are already a yes to hiring me or working together they need that like, “I want to understand him a little more. I want to get a little more credibility.” A lot of the people that work with me start listening while they’re working with me. It starts in the opposite order. I would love to say that it does like, “Start a podcast and you’ll be rich,” but I think I would be lying to people. Seth Godin says that 1% of podcasts drive income.

It says, “Less than 2% make any money and less than 1% drive income.” That doesn’t mean it doesn’t drive something. As you said, it might shorten the cycle for you to close a client or make sure that you retain clients longer because they’re hanging on your every word and they’re more successful. That can have an effect on the business. Maybe it’s just not so direct.

It does force you to do other things like, “I’ve become such a better speaker because of it.” Practicing speaking or listening, practicing either telling long stories or telling short, concise answers. It’s the same thing with generating. A lot of people don’t realize, people wake up and they’re like, “I’m in a bad mood. I’m like this. This is what’s happened during my day,” and then they carry those things throughout their life.

When we’re doing podcasting or interacting in this sense, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to show up to be a jerk with a guest. It forces you to learn how to say, “I need to generate joy right now. I need to generate excitement or curiosity,” which if I can do that with you as a guest, but what if I wasn’t in the mood to do this? We had this booked. I can’t show up and be a big old baby about it. I got to show up and bring who I am. Not only do I teach people that in the work that I do with people, but it was a way for me to practice that, “You got to generate because you say so, not because you feel like it.”

You were listening to podcasts before you became a podcaster. The ironic part is I interviewed a lot of podcasts who are not listeners. There’s a distinctive difference in the shows from people who are listeners first. There’s a couple of aspects of that, but I’m curious as to when you were starting your show and setting it up. Did you set yourself some quality criteria? Did you model yourself after any other shows that you liked? Did you think about those things as you were setting up your podcast for the first time in launching it?

Content Strengthening Advice: Do not write a book or start a podcast because you think it’s going to make you money. But if you like writing or being creative, then by all means.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that Lewis Howes was a big influence. He was one of the early podcasts that I found. He was one of the first that I was bingeing and I felt like I identified with him as a man. I felt like, in a lot of ways, I connected with who he was, and this was many years ago. At that time, there were a lot of things that I was like, “I could do this like that. I could be that.”

I didn’t know what I was doing, so I did model a lot of who I would show up as a podcast. I would look at things like, “I don’t like this. I want to do this a little different.” You could take the things that you do like or don’t like. I haven’t listened to his podcast in a long time. I started listening to Akimbo, Seth Godin’s. I got into Seth Godin, which had me want to do solo episodes, where I could write something out, think something through and present an idea.

You have your Monday microdose.

There are Monday microdoses which were even something I made up. Those were 2 or 3 minutes. Those are short, tiny microdoses, essentially droplets of wisdom or knowledge. There are some episodes layered in the 200 that are 30- or 40-minute episodes, sometimes 20 minutes, which is me talking about a topic, just sharing an opinion. It’s like an editorial. I enjoyed those.

Those took a lot more energy because I had to prep something. I might’ve had to do a little research. With the guest, I didn’t necessarily have to do as much, but I would experiment. The microdoses have been an experiment in 2021. It was a new layer, “Let’s try this new thing.” The solo episodes were like, “Let’s try this new thing.”

I would take things from places or see things that I liked and incorporate them or take things out. I’ve done that with different things. There are probably 3 or 4 more people that have inspired me and helped me. The more I also would say that I podcast, the less I do listen to podcasts because they just get worn out.

I have so many shows that I have to listen to now. You have to listen to them because I’m checking them out for work. It makes it harder to listen to podcasts for enjoyment anymore. You got all these different styles of shows. You’ve got some interview shows, Monday microdose shows. Repurposing, let’s talk about that. Are you reusing your content on social media or what are you doing that is helping you? We’re going to talk about doing a live video, but let’s put that on the table for a moment. Are you reusing this content in ways that you think are helping your business or successful in getting new listeners?

Without a doubt, it’s also one of the things I tell other newer people to do all the time. If the coaches did not go right, if anybody’s in the world of social media is creating content, how can you not repurpose it? It seems so wasteful not to because the same people that listen to your podcast necessarily don’t look at your Instagram or your LinkedIn. The people that read your book don’t listen to your podcast.

I repurpose a lot the way that I do it is the Monday microdoses are repurposed. They are social media content that I like that then I can take out my voice to at tone, inflection, add that part of my personality and then give it to people who are not going to read the comments on the social media posts. They just look at the photos. Now I can give them the content, the thing that matters, not the silly photo that you attached to it.

I took this from Tim Ferriss and we’re doing it our own way, but I hired an editor, a publisher, to take all of my podcasts. We’re going through all the episodes and taking the highlights of all the different people, creating sections and using those sections in different ways to organize basically the greatest moments of the guests. I’m going to go back and say what I learned from each person. We’re going to ask the guests if they want to write an additional 100or 200 words about whatever they want to include. I’ll have another book that has some new content in it, but it’s also in a great way to repurpose all this old content.

It’s a great way to promote the podcast as a whole because people are going to want to find out, “These are the older guests. Who’s the newest one? Who’s next?”

It’s also fun to have that on my shelf. I can’t podcast on my shelf.

I’m a real reader. I was probably a reader first before I became a podcast listener and I still listen, but I won’t listen to books on audio. I draw the line there. That’s just me. I have three books sitting in my credenza that have not been published yet. My listeners are like, “Yes, Tracy, we know you still have a book there that has not been published yet,” because the podcast has gotten to the point where the podcast is so current and relevant that every time I get to go editing the book, I go, “That’s old. We need to now include this one.” It never gets out there. I’d have to stop podcasting in order to put the book out.

I love the idea that you’re putting out a book from your podcast. I love that you’re working on the repurposing of things and also using some of your social media successes as inspiration for your shows so that you’re cross-filtering this content that you’re producing. One of my favorite parts of your show is that it’s long-ish because it’s not super long. We’re talking about like 2, 3 to 5 minutes maybe on a show where you’re talking and setting up a topic, but why you are inviting this guest on, but you haven’t even mentioned the guest at the beginning of your show. You then go, “Let’s introduce this guest,” and then you tie the two things together.

I love that because not enough people do that. They jump right into the bio, intro and guest. They’re so anxious to get there. There’s that little place of context that you give. It’s one of my favorite parts of your show. It’s what I think your binge factor is because it leads people into that episode. Wanting to understand that tie-in, it’s kind of what we call open looping. You’re setting that turn-up and now I’m going to have to listen to make sure that happens in there. “What’s going to happen in there?” Is that something you learned from someone? Is that something you developed over time or is it just naturally you?

Thank you for the compliment. It’s one of my favorite parts of the show. Something that’s important to me is simply being authentic and living in the moment and now, not worrying about two weeks from now or what happened last week. We would all love to do that. It’s a thing that we practice and, but it makes it easier to connect with someone when we connect in the present. We can all go back to the past and complain, but we can connect with somebody in the present. It’s a much more powerful connection. It is just me because I don’t plan it. If we were about to podcast, I don’t sit down with like, “I’m going to sit down with Tracy and here’s my preamble. This is how we’re going to tie it together.”

Content Strengthening Advice: Podcasting can force you to learn how to say, “Hey, I need to generate joy right now.” You need to generate excitement or curiosity with your guest whether you’re in the mood or not.

I believe that on the day of a podcast, if I were interviewing you, I would look at your website and Instagram. I’d read over your questionnaire and what my team has gotten for me. I do that either the night before, depending on the time of the morning or the day off. I simply read it over, look it over and let it go. I know who you are.

I know what you do, but I’m not obsessed with any one thing that I have to hold onto because I noticed from listening to other people, if 50 people are interviewing you and they’ve all dug in on this stuff, then they all ask you similar things and it’s boring. If somebody is popular, they’ve been interviewed a billion times and answered the same questions.

I don’t want to come in blind and not respect the person, but I want to come in with just enough and not too much that I can still be very curious. Part of the intro is what’s happening for me. It’s my part of the show before they get to be the guest. What my hope is that if I were sharing with you what was going on with my life or my space, that you would be able to see something for you as the guests, that you could bounce that back to me. That’s the hope. It doesn’t always happen.

It does for most of the shows, at least most of the episodes that I listened to, is that it’s setting a tone for how this conversation is going to go without it being so restricting and guiding. That’s what you do there that sets the tone nicely. Especially now in these live episodes, you have to do that with the person there. I don’t record. You didn’t hear the intro to you.

I didn’t set that up here, but you’re doing it live with them there. You’re setting that up and setting the tone. It makes me want to make sure to participate in that place that you’re at as a guest on your show. It’s good because you now have already built in this cooperation between you and your guest that is bleeding through the rest of the conversation.

You say it well. I don’t know that I thought it through to the degree. I would agree that one of the things I love about podcasting is that I think when you do it well, we create a relationship in one hour, half an hour or whatever it is. You told me where you live. I’m not going to say it. I don’t know that you share that with the audience. I often travel and I text that has been on my show, “If you’re ever in San Diego where I live, hit me up. I want to grab a drink. Let’s grab a coffee. Let’s take a walk.” It just blows my mind, like that one-hour interview. It’s the only time we’ve ever talked to most of these people. We can create a real connection.

What you’re speaking to is how that’s established. It’s through that share I get vulnerable often and maybe that vulnerability allows them to be vulnerable. I don’t want to say that I want everyone on my show to cry, but I don’t mind when they do. I love when somebody comes and they’re a business leader, and all of a sudden, they’re sharing about a miscarriage or something that happened in their life that they had to overcome that they would never have expected to share. We get to see their humanness, fortitude, resilience and their heart. Many of us go on these things and we were doing our greatest hits.

It’s either we’re doing that as the guests or because the show structure is so set in that way, it forces it, it makes you feel like, “I got to be my pro self,” so then I pull out my sound bites instead of the conversation. This model that you’re working on with doing live on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. You’re live-streaming the actual show itself. You’re going from that and creating the podcast in reverse. The podcast happens after, but you are recording it live. Everybody’s on at that moment. They’re all like, “I’m out there sharing this.” It’s a lot more likely that your guests would be more guarded in that live situation, more nervous, and your beginning is, “I’ve got to be helping that.” Tell me why you decided to do the live stream version of your show?

Live ties into how I do try to do everything in my life, I think we should experiment with life more often. Tim Ferriss is kind of our leader or president of experimenting with life. I didn’t necessarily get it from him. I got it from my personal development and own personal growth of like, “We operate 90%. We all know that our subconscious mind controls 90% of the way we behave and act and show up.” When I started to work on myself and became a coach, I realized the only way that we can experience the fullness of life is to get outside of that 90% or shift that percentage. I do things like for 2020, I went vegan for the entire year on a whim just like, “Let’s see how this feels.”

It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’m about 90% vegan. The experiment ended. As we talked before the show, I did this crazy dating Tulum experiment where I threw myself out online and said, “Who wants to go to Tulum with me?” I let my friends choose who the winner would be. I put myself at the mercy of a new dating experiment.

In 2021, I started recording videos on the beach every day on my phone and posting them as a different way to create content and see what would happen. I’m constantly trying to mix up things in my life to break up the monotony and anything new then becomes monotonous. Those videos on the beach become just the new normal, so then I got to change it.

All of this ties into how I do my podcast. As we’re having this conversation, I’ve been in a deep conversation with myself. We are 200-plus episodes in. I think I’m a very different person than the guy who started this years ago. I want to keep The DreamMason Podcast, but I want to shift the show a little bit. I want to change it and send it in a new direction.

I’m not totally sure how. I think a lot of the things I’ve been doing our experimentation. The Monday microdoses were experimentation. I did a whole series on diversity, equality and inclusion. I do the solo episodes. I’m doing the live as what you asked me about, which is like, “We’ll use StreamYard,” and went live and saw what happened.

You had mentioned to me before that you thought about producing more videos because they’re doing well. I’m sure it’s because you’re finding out that video is doing well out on social media. You were thinking, “I need to do more video, but then that seemed like a lot more work. Why not do them together?”

I don’t know if you noticed this. Sometimes we think about what we like and projected it onto other people. I’m never going to watch a fifteen-minute thing on YouTube or Facebook. If I want to watch something, I watch Netflix or a produced show. I also know that’s not the whole world. There are millions of people watching YouTube, TikTok and long stream videos that are very unproduced online.

I’m like, “I don’t want to do that because it’s not what I like.” I think that’s a big thing in the business world or podcasts world. Sometimes it’s like, “Who cares what you like?” Sometimes what you like is the opposite of what would get you where you want to go. Health is a good example. I might not like broccoli, but if I want to be healthier, maybe it’s a good idea that I eat broccoli.

Content Strengthening Advice: If you’re in the world of social media and are creating content, you have to repurpose your content. It’s so wasteful not to because some people that listen to your podcast don’t look at your Instagram.

You’re so funny that you say that because I say this to my clients all the time like, “If you want me to tell you what the actual hidden to podcasting is, it’s not your podcast. It’s your blog, but you don’t want to hear that.” Ninety percent of my clients out there don’t like blogs, writing or anything about that. That scares them. They don’t want to hear that, but it’s the truth. The numbers are there. It says that it’s there and why does it work?

All of that, I can explain to them, but they don’t want to hear that because it’s not where they are. They like to speak. They’re speakers. They’re out there. They’re doing those things. Sometimes we have almost to get ourselves into an experiment, get ourselves into this mode so that those things come and they happen, and then we go, “I guess that wasn’t so bad.”

Nothing often happens as fast as we would like it to. We would all love to make five episodes and be like, “We’re going viral.” It could happen. People make a video and it goes viral, then they find out that all their videos don’t go viral. For most of us, most of the time, the things we want take a little time. It takes consistency, some discipline, and then it requires creativity.

When you start doing videos, it’s not like all of a sudden, my podcast completely shuts up because there are videos. You have to market that new thing. You have to nurture that new baby and see what happens. You have to notice maybe everybody’s show isn’t for every medium. Personally, I don’t want to watch an interview, but other people like that. People clearly watch Joe Rogan, Russell Brand and some of these people.

Sometimes, we do resist the things that are not us. I want to touch on the three things that we usually do on the show every time. I’m explaining this so that our readers out there to understand why I asked you these are because these are valuable tidbits of information and advice that you’re going to give to them. We repurpose these and reuse them in other ways, so they become an article in Authority Magazine. They become little stories on Instagram, Facebook and other places like that.

We’re reusing all of these and sometimes they become little short videos because sometimes the short videos like on TikTok and other places do better. That’s what this is. That’s why we never missed this segment of the show. Although I’m not a fan of segmenting, I’ve shifted it from 5 things to 3 things because that’s what’s working for us now. Alex, some tips out there for our audience reading who are aspiring or existing podcasters who want to understand what it takes to increase and engage listeners?

One thing would be, you have to generate the love and the excitement for it because if you’re not in love with what you’re doing, then the audience is going to know and they’re going to feel it.

That’s such good advice. That’s just putting that into the content to the beginning. It’s like baking with love. It comes out in the cake at the end, so you’ve got that going for you too. One other thing, when we are doing this podcast and are all in on it and everything, we want to get to a place where we’re getting great guests because we feel like our show is amping up. You’ve got some good guests on your show. How do you go about getting those great guests?

I’ve been blown away by how far social media can get you. It’s like direct messaging people, commenting in people’s comments inside of the post because sometimes we DM people and they get lost in that other folder. Mostly, it’s those things. It’s trying to go get them in the social media world, but if you can connect with them again, it comes back to love. Some of my favorite guests were because I was able to share the difference they made in my life.

I can’t say that about every single guest. The biggest ones that I was the most excited about were the ones that had an impact on me personally or someone I knew that I was able to go, share a real message or real personal like, “This is why I would love to talk to you. This is why it’s important.” It wasn’t some nonsense, made-up thing. A lot of those people did it because they could see the human connection. It goes along with it. If you don’t feel that way, maybe they shouldn’t be on your show.

We talked a little earlier. The third thing that we like to ask questions about is the monetization of the show. You said that you aren’t monetizing your show. You don’t have that direct path and message, but you’ve listened to a lot of podcasts. What do you think are some of the more successful monetization strategies?

I know what’s not. If you’re not the one percenter like Russell Brand, Joe Rogan, Brené Brown or whoever these top one-percenters are, you don’t get to put commercials for five minutes. I don’t think we like it when any of the famous people do it, but it’s even more obnoxious when you’re not there and we have to listen to this stuff, especially if it just doesn’t make sense. If you’re in personal development, a spiritual guide, a Reiki healer and you’re hawking mattresses, it makes me feel like you’re in it for the wrong reasons.

On my show, I have two commercials. One is for the personal development program that I went through. They don’t pay me for it. I wanted to do it because of the difference it made for me. One is for my book because I want people to know I have a book and I don’t want to talk about it on every single episode. I’ve had people ask me to, “Would you advertise for this thing?” I’m like, “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel honest and true. It just feels like I’m trying to make a quick buck.”

I feel that way about email sometimes. Some people got their whole email affiliate programs, strategies and it’s just not me. I worked hard to get my client lists and to get my subscribers to my show. I don’t know that I want just to hawk anything. Unless I feel strongly like, “This is the best tool, the best thing I’ve ever used and I want to share that with you,” I don’t know that I want to do it. I feel like our audience is more intimate. We feel like we owe them more and they’ve been grateful to us in return because they’ve referred, shared, rated and reviewed us.

It’s not a right wrong. If you go into a Home Depot, you’re not judging them for the random things they sell that maybe feel cheap, like they’re trying to get that extra dollar at the checkout line. Let’s say I come into your mom-and-pop boutique store on Main Street, USA, and everything is homemade, beautiful and nice. Right up by the register, you have a bunch of cheap stuff that you ordered from online, from overseas and it’s just to get a couple of bucks out of everyone. It’s going to leave me with like, “That store was cheesy and tacky.” The thing is, at the end of the day, people have to decide what they want to be.

Are you in it for the money? There’s nothing wrong with that too. Home Depot is a big store. They’re giving people jobs. They are making money. They provide things. There are people that like their local hardware store that everybody knows you. It’s personal and they don’t try to upsell you on anything. They’re just there when you need them, but I think you have to decide who you want to be. It’s like, “What is monetization to you? Is it about actual money or something else? Could you be monetizing through credibility? Could you be monetizing through notoriety?” Maybe people will know who you are and respect you, but you don’t make money from it. Maybe that’s the currency that you trade-in.

Content Strengthening Advice: Your subconscious mind controls 90% of how you behave and show up. The only way that you can experience the fullness of life is to get outside of that 90% and shift that percentage.

Alternative monetization is what I call it here. You were talking about your speaking has improved. Maybe another alternative monetization is that you’re trading in speaking opportunities that you’re going to get because you have your podcasts. I want to talk a little DreamMason. The name of the show resonated with me because my father was a brick mason. My grandfather and great grandfather-built chimneys, fireplaces and brick walls. I can go back home to Connecticut and people will be like, “Your grandfather built that wall for me.” There’s something so solid about mason. Tell me how you came up with the DreamMason name.

Unfortunately and fortunately, when I started my own personal development journey and training as a coach, I went through super rigorous training. This was not like I left the restaurant hospitality world, put on a new hat and said, “I’m a coach. Let’s go.” I went through a year-long, very intensive training in the personal development program.

At the beginning of that program, the first couple of months in, people were calling themselves life coaches or business coaches. I didn’t like either one. It’s too much explaining. People don’t know what these things are. They’re confusing business coaches and consultants. Life coaches are so woo-woo like, “Who is someone to coach?”

I’m not saying that’s what either one of those is. It just didn’t sit right. I kept trying to think, “What do I want to call myself? Who do I want to work with?” I kept coming back to this place. I remember I was sitting at my parents’ house in Los Angeles. I was living in New York at the time and I was visiting for holidays. I had a month left as I was quitting my job and going full-time into coaching. I was playing with a thesaurus, looking up words for visioning and dreams and all these things.

I was looking up words for building, like constructing. I had a clear vision that what I’m helping people do is craft whatever their dream is. We’re not talking about to be like your lifelong dream. It could be like a dream for this year or this month. What are their dreams? What they want, it’s simpler. If whatever it is that you want, you’re going to have to build it. It’s not going to just land at your doorstep and you’re just like, “This is everything I wanted.”

There’s no heavy lifting. You never have to lift a brick and it happens to you.

I’ve been talking a lot about this. There’s a misnomer in manifestation that people are like, “I have to manifest that thing that I want.” You also have to manifest the human that you’re going to become to get that thing that you want, which no one talks about like, “If I want to be a millionaire, I need to manifest me as a millionaire. A millionaire would behave a certain way to get that thing. If I want to be a podcaster, I have to start manifesting myself to show up in a certain way.” To me, that was that combination. It hit clear. When it hit was like, “A DreamMason, someone who builds dreams.” It seems so obvious. Why am I stumbling on this? It seemed like I did and it became a thing. I don’t walk around and tell people I’m a DreamMason. It started to feel a little obnoxious.

This is the thing I want everybody out there to read to. Sometimes I don’t criticize anyone’s show name on the show. You’re my guests, so I wouldn’t criticize yours. Yours is great. There’s no criticism necessary, but I want to point out why it’s good because I think that people can learn from that because I do hear a lot of bad show names. When you have a name like the DreamMason, it’s great for attracting guests because the guests can maybe believe in themselves. It’s like, “I’m a dream builder. I belong on the show.”

That sounds like a great attraction point. From that standpoint, it can also be used to refer to you like if you were being announced as a keynote speaker at an event. It applies in both ways and that’s a great place to be when you have a name that has that. Your audience is sitting back going, “That’s what I want, to build a dream. I need a guide. I need the DreamMason to guide me. It might be you and your guests doing that for me.” That’s where it has this universal appeal in its name and it becomes a perfect name to utilize for a show.

Before we go, I want to make sure that we get some last-minute advice to those aspiring podcasters. You were just talking about something that I totally love. A lot of times, people come to me because they want me to help launching or setting up, doing their show and there’s a to-do list. They want to know what the to-do list is, but I love the idea of the to-be list. Could you give our audience some advice if you’re aspiring to be a podcaster, haven’t pulled the trigger yet or built that podcast room yet. What do you need to be, Alex, to be a podcast host?

You could apply this to anything, not just podcasting. You need to start with the thing you want to create, “What do I want?” We’re talking about podcasting, “What’s the show that I want?” I talk a lot in terms when I talk about podcasting. I use TV shows because people know them more. Do you want to show like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm or a cartoon like The Simpsons? What’s the energy of the thing that you want? What’s the way the audience that would watch that show? Have a clear vision of, “I want a podcast that would be like this.” Who do you have to be to create that show?

The same person who does The Simpsons probably isn’t doing The Wire or The Godfather movie. It’s possible, but likely there are different audiences, different people, different age ranges and we could get even more specific. We could say like The Godfather and Oprah. The type of person you’d have to be to create an Oprah or The Godfather-like show, you’d have to generate yourself as a different type of human being, which means your behavior, tone, energy, the way you’re creative. What are the actions that have to be taken from that way of being?

Do you want that? Sometimes you might not want that.

That’s why I think where it starts is what do we want then who would we have to be. We can apply this to anything. If you tell me that you want to be married or you want to be president, the way you’d have to be is very different. It’s not to say that they don’t have some overlapping characteristics. You’d want people to like you, in theory. The way that you would take action would be so different. If I say to you, “I need to be a person who’s fun and adventurous. I need to be a person who’s logistical,” the actions I would take from those two different places are completely different actions.

You’ve built a great show. Your dream of podcasting certainly turned into a great 200-0plus reality here. I enjoy knowing all of the experiments that you’re going through both online as I’m watching you on social and on your show. I look forward to seeing what that experiment is going to be for you next. I can’t wait to know what that is. We might have to have you back, let you know and tell us all about what that next experiment did for us.

I appreciate you. Thanks for having me on.

—

I’m glad that I got a chance to talk to Alex Terranova of The DreamMason Podcast. He was so open in sharing and gave us great insights and answered all my questions in great detail, which I appreciate because I have a giant page of notes that I took. I was trying to dive into why he was doing some things and his show has been such an experiment. It’s the DreamMason experiment. It’s nice to see that experimentation going around in the way that he tries out the microdoses and does different things. He tries out different types of guests and openings.

Content Strengthening Advice: What is monetization to you? Is it about actual money, or is it about something else? Is it for credibility? Notoriety? Or maybe respect but you actually don’t make money from it.

He’s constantly experimenting with a show pulling through, coming to things and keeping the things that are working, then revamping and revitalizing the things that aren’t. That’s the makings of a great show in the long run. Who doesn’t want to be along as a listener for the ride of that? You see him working so hard on his show. You see that as things change. You’re like, “That wasn’t so good.”

You know, as the listener, but we put up with a lot when we enjoy our hosts or we are getting a lot out of what they do. There’s a lot that he does well. He has done very well from the beginning. You take that in your head, but then you see them improve. That just gives you more impetus to be around for the next episode, to give them credit for all that work that he’s doing for you. It shows that he’s focused on that listener.

It’s important at the end of the day that when I’m listening to a show, I feel like it’s about me and not about you, the host. At the end of the day, Alex Terranova is making The DreamMason Podcast. He’s building it brick by brick, building it up piece by piece, but he’s not afraid to tear down a little section if needed and rebuild it to make it right for the listener.

There are some great lessons from Alex. I appreciate him coming on the show. You’re going to want to check out The DreamMason Podcast. Subscribe, check it out. If you enjoy it, share it with other people, share it with someone who might get a benefit out of that inspiration and vision for how you might build your dreams, just like Alex has done for himself.

I always put everything at TheBingeFactor.com. There are some interesting things going on at the show that I want to make you aware of. There’s The Binge Factor Media Page because we’re doing more of a media oversight group, more of a network model. I have both The Next Little Thing and The Binge Factor running together in the blog there in the episodes. You’ll be able to see both of them combined side by side. We’re looking at people, the products and lots of cool little things at the same time. There are some fun things going on there.

Don’t forget that you can find links for every podcaster, including Alex Terranova. If you can’t remember, but you remember what we were talking about and you can’t remember the person’s name, that’s the place to go. All you got to do is remember TheBingeFactor.com or BingeFactorMedia.com. You can go right there. Thanks, everyone, for reading. I appreciate you. Make sure to suggest some questions or some other shows that you would like me to feature here on the show. I look forward to bringing you even more great podcasters.

Important Links:

• The DreamMason Podcast
• Fictional Authenticity
• Redefining Masculinity
• The Frequency Shifters – Apple Podcasts
• The Coaching Show – Apple Podcasts
• Akimbo
• The Next Little Thing
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/alexterranova/
• https://www.Facebook.com/DreamMasonInc
• https://www.YouTube.com/channel/UCvRU3eZLTS0n_Aj01w6McMg

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